to light and from light again to dark.  There were at most a dozen men, and they might have been a band of belated workmen returning to their homes or a line of revellers that had been sobered into silence.  They might have been—­but a sudden recollection came to him, and he closed the door softly and went out.  There was but one thing that it meant; this he knew.  It meant a midnight attack on the gaol, and a man dead before morning, who must die anyway—­it meant vengeance so quiet yet so determined that it was as sure as the hand of God—­and it meant the defiance of laws whose guardian he was.

He broke into a run, crossing the green and following the path that rose and fell into the gullies as it led on to the gaol.  As he ran he saw the glow of the night-lamp in the sick-room, and he heard the insistent baying of the hound.

The moonlight was thick and full.  It showed the quiet hill flanked by the open pasture; and it showed the little whitewashed gaol, and the late roses blooming on the fence.  It showed also the mob that had gathered—­a gathering as quiet as a congregation at prayer.  But in the silence was the danger—­the determination to act that choked back speech—­the grimness of the justice that walks at night—­the triumph of a lawless rage that knows control.

As he reached the hill he saw that the men he had followed had been enforced by others from different roads.  It was not an outbreak of swift desperation, but a well-planned, well-ordered strategy; it was not a mob that he faced, but an incarnate vengeance.

He came upon it quickly, and as he did so he saw that the sheriff was ahead of him, standing, a single man, between his prisoner and the rope.  “For God’s sake, men, I haven’t got the keys,” he called out.

Nicholas swung himself over the fence and made his way to the entrance beneath the steps that led to the floor above.  He had come as one of the men about him, and they had not heeded him.  Now, as he faced them from the shadow he saw here and there a familiar face—­the face of a boy he had played with in childhood.  Several were masked, but the others raised bare features to the moonlight—­features that were as familiar as his own.

Then he stood up and spoke.  “Men, listen to me.  In the name of the Law, I swear to you that justice shall be done—­I swear.”

A voice came from somewhere.  “We ain’t here to talk—­you stand aside, and we’ll show you what we’re here for.”

Again he began.  “I swear to you—­”

“We don’t want no swearing.”  On the outskirts of the crowd a man laughed.  “We don’t want no swearing,” the voice repeated.

The throng pressed forward, and he saw the faces that he knew crowding closer.  A black cloud shut out the moonlight.  Above the pleading of the sheriffs tones he heard the distant baying of the hound.